WESTSIDER MARTY REISMAN
America's best-loved ping-pong player
6-10-78
Marty Reisman was ready for The Tonight Show. But was The
Tonight Show ready for Marty Reisman?
In a recent TV appearance, his name was announced and he started across the stage toward the desk of guest host John Davidson. Then suddenly he seemed to get lost in the floodlights. For a few seconds the television audience didn't know what was happening. An anonymous cameraman raced out of the wings to guide Marty to his destination.
"My gosh, that's never happened before," laughed Davidson. But Marty's humorous stumbling may well have been part of his act because, as America's best-loved table tennis player, he very often does things that haven't been done before. On The Tonight Show he returned shots with his foot and behind his back, broke a cigarette with his slam shot (that has been clocked at 105 miles per hour), and soon had Davidson sprawled across the table trying to reach shots that came back of their own.
At 48, Reisman (rhymes with "policeman") is still the nation's highest paid Ping-Pong player in exhibitions. The stunts that he has developed over the past 30 years make his games pure entertainment. But Marty is more than a player; he is a personality, a man with a thousand stories to tell, and an instant friend to the people who visit his table tennis center on 96th Street just west of Broadway.
"I feel I'm moving with the times," he remarks, late one evening at the center. "When from an athletic professional point of view some people would think about retirement, my career is on the point of fresh blossoming." He is referring to the fact that his autobiography, The Money Player, published in 1974, is now being converted into a movie script. And other things are happening. Several months ago his table tennis parlor was the scene of a unique recording session — a piece of music titled Tournament Overture for Flute, Cello, Synthesizer, and Two Ping-Pong Players, composed especially for Reisman. The event was followed by a regular tournament. And this fall Marty has a long-range exhibition tour lined up.
"I started playing on the Lower East Side, about 1942," he says. "A year later, at the age of 13, I was the New York City Junior Champion. … At 17, I represented the United States in the World Championship which was held in London, at Wembley Stadium. There were 10,000 people watching. I lost in the quarterfinals. … The next year I made it to the semifinals and received a rating of number three in the world."
That year, 1949, was probably the peak of Marty's career from a purely athletic standpoint, although he was good enough to win the U.S. Championship in 1958 and 1960. What distinguishes him from other players, however, is the variety and richness of his experiences in the world of Ping-Pong. For three years he toured with the Harlem Globetrotters as their star attraction at halftime. He spent several years in the Far East as well, and was in Hanoi when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. Altogether he has played in 65 countries, and has picked up such titles as South American Champion, Canadian Champion, and British Champion.
He once taught the game to a chimpanzee; the chimp managed to return the ball up to four times in a row. "But the most astounding thing about him," recalls Marty, "was his short span of attention. When the ball was about an inch from his racket, he'd turn his head away and get smacked in the face."
As the title of his autobiography indicates, Marty has also been known to place a wager on occasion. "I've hustled when I've had to," he confesses. "But it hasn't been my way of life. I don't misrepresent myself. I play against the best players in the world, all over the world. Wherever I am, I create the drama, the action, the excitement, because of the large sums of money I bet." In one of his biggest hustles he flew to Omaha, Nebraska, under the guise of a baby crib salesman, to help a man who had been hustled himself. Reisman played for $1,000 a game and emerged from the contest 14 games ahead.
West 96th Street has long been a hotbed of table tennis activity. A Ping Pong parlor opened there in 1934, and Marty took it over in 1958. Today, many of the world's great players stop by for a game when they visit New York. Dustin Hoffman, Walter Matthau, Bobby Fischer and Art Carney have played there also. Marty's regular customers range from 8-year-old boys to a man of 83 who plays twice a week. The center opens in the afternoon and doesn't close until 3:30 in the morning, seven days a week. "I live on the West Side and so do most of my friends," says Marty.
A man has been standing nearby during the interview; Marty introduces him as Bill, his former manager.
"Manager?" snorts the man with a gruff smile. "He can't be managed. Human beings can be managed, but Reisman is something different. If he says 'I'll be there at 3 o'clock' he might show up at 4 — the next day. But," he concedes, "if Marty didn't have those idiosyncracies, he wouldn't have those rare talents."